Lord Pannick argued that the law already rejects the 'absolute sanctity of life', and he made the analogy between the right to refuse life-saving treatment and assisted dying

He is philosophically and legally wrong

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Pannick is doing a sleight of hand - he is defining the sanctity of life in a wid(er) and is using that to say "we've already rejected this principle". The clue is in his use of the qualifier 'absolute' in front of sanctity of life.

I'm sorry, but that Report is objectively meh

Does the ECHR constrain UK immigration policy?

The Report says it doesn't because (1) ECHR recognises the right of countries to control their borders and (2) it only ruled against the UK three times

Both of those are non seq

https://twitter.com/UniofOxford/status/1963556253067559376

The authors cite the Strasbourg Court saying that states have the right to control their borders but that right is "subject to treaty obligations" and that includes the ECHR

So what are the obligations that the ECHR imposes on states in the field of migration?

They don't say

Labour MPs have not clocked the 90%+ of small boats are genuine refugees under the Refugee Convention (and/or are protected from removal under Art 3 ECHR)

Only two ways to stop the boats:

1️⃣ Uncapped safe and legal route

2️⃣ deport genuine refugees On option 2, it could be to a safe third country (congratulations you've reinvented Rwanda) or to their country of origin (are you really going to send Iranians back to Iran in breach of international law?)

Initially thought the prospect of Charles refusing RA was a joke but having thought about it more, I think it's more complicated

Some very rough thoughts

1/ Afaik the TIA is unique in being a Bill that is (a) staunchly opposed by the CoE and (b) not government policy.

https://twitter.com/RightToLifeUK/status/1953840477498663115

(Abortion Act was not govt policy but was not opposed by the CofE ; Same Sex Marriage opposed by CofE though not particularly staunchly but it was govt policy)

The UK Government's Human Rights Memorandum on the Chagos Surrender Bill says Chagossians have no right to self-determination, only Mauritians do!

Shameful As the Memo admits, the UK-Mauritius Treaty does not oblige Mauritius to allow Chagossians to go back to Chagos

This is key as some people are selling this treaty as having positives for the Chagossians; it does not

.@CMO_England was confident about doctors knowing the Mental Capacity Act inside out

The awkward thing is that he got a key piece of detail about the Act wrong: that there is a sliding scale of capacity

But that's not in the MCA and is not in line with case-law

Receipts in 🧵 The MCA lays down some general principles, but the sliding scale is not mentioned and I look in vain for it in the MCA legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/9/c…

Lord Cameron makes a powerful case.

Unfortunately just about everything he says about the Bill is false or misleading

Let's compare what he claims the Bill does with the actual legal text

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https://twitter.com/dignityindying/status/1861884998422286757

1/ Cameron: P must have fewer than 6 months to live

Bill: death must be reasonably expected within 6 months. UK court case law has interpreted that to mean "would death within 6 months be a suprise" and we know that's about 50% accurate

Does the Leadbeater Bill have adequate protection against pressure?

Here is a 🧵of lawyers suggesting it does not offer such protection, i.e. people will be pressured into suicide

And as far as I can tell none of it has been answered by backers of the Bill First up we have the Former President of the Family Division of the High Court, who thinks the Bill "falls lamentably short of providing adequate safeguards"



Shockingly no one has responded to his concerns transparencyproject.org.uk/assisted-dying…

As I explained to @JPonpolitics the Bill offers no protection to people who are unable to live in dignity due to the State's failings. If you're terminally ill and wish to die because it will take too long to get a ramp installed, the Bill will require the State to help you die Why is that? Well if that person is terminally ill and meets all the other requirements they are eligible

Their wish is clear, informed and settled.

The failure to provide the support is not "coercion or pressure by another person"

Munby delivers a fatal blow to the idea of a judicial safeguard for assisted suicide

But leaving aside the substance, this really shows how the PMB process is inadequate and how, frankly, bad the attitude of the proponents of the Bill is

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https://twitter.com/seethrujustice/status/1851660824164565030

1️⃣ We don't have a Bill and so Munby is unable to comment on it but the points he raises are fundamental to one aspect which we have been told the Bill will have (a judicial safeguard). For all we know, we might not get the Bill until two days before the vote

Three major flaws with this argument

1) Ideas of State neutrality might be valid if all that was proposed was decriminalisation but what Romain is proposing is for the State to offer this service. Thinking the State should not do something is not "imposing your ideology"

https://twitter.com/RabbiRomain/status/1850457511880503527

2) He assumes away any possible trade offs due to having this as an available option, but there are downsides for those who wouldn't want it (that's the whole point of the concern about safeguards)

There's no material distinction between assisted suicide and euthanasia: there is intent for the patient to die in both. Allowing AS but not euthanasia is discriminatory against those who are physically unable to do the final act themselves (like Nicklinson), and risk ECHR breach

https://twitter.com/JakeBenRichards/status/1849460306092716338

Don't just take my word for it: that's the conclusion of the author of a leading work on Assisted Suicide and the ECHR

Assisted Suicide

Falconer Bill has two key safeguards: (1) person (P) must freely choose, and (2) P must be terminally ill

Unfortunately, we know that the procedures proposed to check that those are met cannot succeed in doing so, i.e. Bill fails on its own terms

Receipts 🧵 The procedure is that two doctors have to satisfy themselves that P is terminally ill and acting freely, and then it goes to a High Court where a judge checks their homework. Sounds robust? Except we know it doesn't work.

Seeking to leave the ECHR and replace it with a British Bill of Rights is a big mistake

Human rights law is problematic because it gives judges the power to decide what should be questions of political morality

A British Bill of Rights would lead to the same problems 🧵

https://twitter.com/KateEMcCann/status/1841436105192656962

First up, that living instrument doctrine everyone on the right hates. Guess who invented it? Not the Strasbourg Court but our very own Law Lords all the way back in 1929 in a case called Edwards v AG of Canada (the Law Lords were the ultimate court of appeal)

Civilised nations agreed in the torture convention not to deport people to places where they may be tortured.

But the ECHR goes much further and prevents us from deporting someone to a country whether they might get slapped just once by the police

Receipts in 🧵

https://twitter.com/dominicgrieve_/status/1841029386817921495

Strasbourg first held that extradition to a country where someone might be tortured is contrary to the ECHR in the Sorting v UK (1989). It held - in a single unreasoned line - that this extended beyond torture to all things prohibited by Article 3 ECHR

That's not quite right. Under the Refugee Convention serious criminals can be deported back to their country of origin even if that country is unsafe.

By contrast under the ECHR, criminality is not an exception to the principle of non-refoulement.

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https://twitter.com/dominicgrieve_/status/1841025459615666351

Another exclusion under the RC applies to those who have committed war crimes/crimes against humanity abroad. Even where that applies the ECHR does not allow for those people to be removed